The Thin Man Goes Home (1945, Richard Thorpe)

The Thin Man Goes Home is very genial. It would be hard for it not to be genial given some of the supporting cast is around just to be genial–familiar character actors like Edward Brophy, Donald Meek and Harry Davenport are around to be likable. And why shouldn’t William Powell and Myrna Loy heading to small town U.S.A. be genial? Of course, there’s a murder mystery, but director Thorpe manages to keep the investigation of it amusing too.

The film’s problem is the geniality is the important thing, not just an approach to the story. Thorpe does really well with some of the comedic set pieces–the Grand Central Station sequence at the beginning, followed by a great packed train car sequence, then there’s a later one with Loy trailing Brophy to comic effect. He does great with Loy and Powell’s few scenes together too. Eventually their visit to Davenport and Lucile Watson (as Powell’s parents) and the murder mystery make it hard to make time for scenes together.

At least, it’s hard for Robert Riskin and Dwight Taylor to figure it out in the script, which is strange, since it’s a really breezy piece of writing. Between Powell acting without sensible motivation, one large subplot being entirely ignored and then a few characters forgotten about, the script’s Home’s biggest problem.

Powell and Loy are good, though she gets much better scenes, and the supporting cast is fine.

After being a reasonably successful entry, the third act is a complete disaster.

★★

CREDITS

Directed by Richard Thorpe; screenplay by Robert Riskin and Dwight Taylor, based on a story by Riskin and Harry Kurnitz and characters created by Dashiell Hammett; director of photography, Karl Freund; edited by Ralph E. Winters; music by David Snell; produced by Everett Riskin; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.